Re: [gNewSense-users] What is the firefox problem?

[Janet Hawtin]

On 12/13/06, Damian Wardingley <address@hidden> wrote:
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> address@hidden wrote:
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> > No mp3, firefox, etc.
> > Stay conservative as in: When in doubt, do not include.
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> Can someone please elaborate on the "firefox problem" - something to do
> with a trademark on the Firefox-encircles-the-globe logo, right? but
> Linus has the trademark Linux, doesn't he? Does this same trademark
> problem afflict Thunderbird email?

Same issue for firefox and thunderbird as I understand it.
It is an issue of trademarks as a legal piece of stuff not working
well with community distribution. Trademarks are required to be
defended, ie the owner of the mark has to bless all distributions,
this doesn't work if you want to make a freely sharable distribution.
Basically we need a new kind of recognition mark, a kind of
attribution, which does not depend on active blessing of each project,
but which is a gesture of recognition from the community to the parent
project and which can be used by a community to acknowledge a project.

Trademarks are defined and required to be used in a broadcast kind of way.
We need a mark which works in a distributed context

ianal

Janet